


circular arguments

by neraiutsuze



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Everyone's heads are a mess right now about the Essek Situation, Gen, Introspection, What Is Guilt And Remorse And Redemption, canon-typical mentions of violence, spoilers for episodes 97-99
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:35:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23167087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neraiutsuze/pseuds/neraiutsuze
Summary: You know your friends, and you know what they'll say. Finding the words to argue back is hard, even in your own head.
Relationships: The Mighty Nein & Essek Thelyss
Comments: 6
Kudos: 45





	1. caleb

_It was different for you_ , they say. _You were controlled. Manipulated. They made you do it._

_I wanted to do it_ , you say. _I regret it now, but at the time, I believed it was right_. _I would have defended everything I did. He was manipulated too._

_He doesn’t show any remorse_ , they say. _You do. You know right from wrong._

_I learned it,_ you say. _I killed, I lied, I cheated, I stole, I put innocent people in danger to protect myself, and I learned morality from being around people who gave me a chance. So can he._

_You didn’t do anything on the same scale as him,_ they say. _Hundreds of lives were lost because of a war he started._

_He didn’t start it_ , you say. _He was a spark that ignited a powder keg, by accident. He wanted information, not a war. I have so much blood on my hands of dissidents, traitors, worshippers of unapproved gods, anyone the empire didn’t like, and I killed and tortured them directly, how is that less reprehensible?_

_But he doesn’t care_ , they insist. _He doesn’t think he did anything wrong. You take responsibility._

_He can learn,_ you insist just as strongly _. I did. Why did I deserve the chance to grow, and he only deserves punishment?_

_You didn’t hurt us_ , they reply. _Even from the start, you never did anything to hurt_ us _. He lied to our faces and informed on us to the Empire. Dairon got hurt in this war that he caused, and they’re Beau’s mentor. He got Veth’s husband captured and tortured him. Nothing_ you _did ever hurt_ us _._

_If we give him a chance, he can make amends,_ you beg.

_Why should we be the ones to make concessions, when he’s the one who caused us such heartache?_ they ask.

This debate runs through your head over and over and it always stalls here. You have no response to that. You can’t force them to ignore their hurt and pain for him. You don’t know what to say to convince them their pain has better targets when you know what you really want to scream is _because_ _he is me, he is me if i had never met you all, and if you can reject him so easily then i don’t understand how you can be so insistent that i have worth._


	2. yasha

_It was different for you_ , they say. _You were controlled. Obann made you do it. You did bad things and you hurt us, but you weren’t yourself._

 _Not then_ , you say. _But before him. I was not a good person in the past. I killed so many with my tribe._

 _That’s different_ , they say. _You were in battle. You killed in self-defense. He caused a war without thinking._

 _We raided too,_ you say. _They called me Orphanmaker for a reason. It was how I was raised. He wasn’t taught to care about others either._

 _But you do,_ they say. _You care so much. You’re gentle, you’re kind. He still thinks he’s superior, even now._

 _Zuala taught me gentleness,_ you say. _I learned to be soft when someone showed me how. He’s already changed so much just from being around us_.

 _He hasn’t really changed,_ they say. _He cares about us now, but he still doesn’t think he did anything wrong with the war. You know right from wrong._

 _You’re expecting too much from him so quickly_ , you say. _He’s never had friends before. Unlearning the way you saw the world for most of your life is hard._

 _We haven’t seen any sign that he wants to unlearn anything,_ they say. _He’s not making any effort. He wants everything to go back to exactly how it was. You ran away from your old ways to be with her._

 _It took time,_ you say. _Give him time. You’re good at helping lost people. You helped me._

 _You deserved helping,_ they insist. _He hasn’t shown us that he does. He chose to do terrible things and people died, but he only cares about having lied to us. What happens if he decides we aren’t his friends any more? Or if he decides the war would be useful to his research if it started again?_

 _That’s what friends are for,_ you plead. _To keep you from making mistakes and straying from the path. You’ve helped me learn not to start with my sword. The circus, Molly, all of you - you gave me a chance to be more than a brute. We can give him a chance to be more than a traitor._

 _Why should we give him that time and effort,_ they say, _when he can’t even acknowledge that the war he started wasn’t worth any knowledge he gained from it? When that war decimated Veth’s home and hurt her family? When he worked with and gave power to Caleb’s abusers?_

You’ve never been good with words. Even in your own mind, with the luxury of time to think of what you might say, you don’t know how to express the deep, gnawing sorrow that hearing them talk about Essek the way they do builds in your stomach. Maybe they’re right about him. You can’t argue that they don’t deserve to be angry.

But still. You can’t help the sad, dark little thought that keeps running through your mind.

 _If this is how you think, you would have hated me, if you’d known me before Zuala_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i mean i'm making some assumptions here about yasha's past but nothing that i don't think was implied by ashley already, and based on yasha's face during some of these discussions......


	3. jester

_It’s different for Caleb_ , they say. _He was manipulated to do bad things. They messed with his memory. Essek made his choices_.

 _But he’s sorry,_ you say. _He wants to do better now. He wants to be good, like Caleb does._

 _He doesn’t want to be good_ , they say. _He wants to face no consequences. He wants things to go back to the way they were. He deserves punishment, not to get everything he wanted from the start._

 _He didn’t want this,_ you say. _He made a mistake and worked with the wrong people, and he’s scared to die because of it. It doesn’t make him a bad person to want to live and study when dying and burning his research wouldn’t help anybody anyway._

 _He has to face justice_ , they say. _Otherwise he would do it again. He’ll think what he did is OK. He won’t learn._

 _He won’t learn anything if the Bright Queen has him killed either,_ you say. _He can learn so much more about doing good things by living and being around us. He can make amends with his actions. That’s what we’ve all been doing._

 _His war hurt Veth’s family,_ they say. _It got Dairon hurt. It put Bryce in danger. Kiri was in danger in Hupperdook too. Hundreds and thousands of people died. What could he possibly do to make up for that, other than take responsibility?_

 _But him dying or being in prison won’t change any of that,_ you say. _We helped Waccoh and gave information to the Bright Queen, and those things definitely got Empire people killed too, didn’t they? We took the Beacon and hid it for ages, and the war kept going on because of that, didn’t it? None of us can change what happened because of us, just what we do to try and fix it now. He’s trying to help now._

 _To help himself,_ they say. _To cover his tracks. He doesn’t care about all the people who died. He doesn’t see it was bad, because he got information from it. He’s only happy the war ended because it takes the pressure off him._

 _You don’t know that,_ you insist. _We haven’t talked to him properly about it. We don’t know inside his head. You’re not giving him a chance. He wants to be better._

 _You’re too nice,_ they say, gently. _You always want to see the best in people. Sometimes people don’t deserve your kindness. Sometimes they’ll take advantage. Sometimes they’ll just not turn out to be as good as you wanted them to be._

You know that’s what they’d say because that’s how people always see you, in moments like this. You haven’t worked out yet how to express that it’s not naiveté that leads you to think like this. You’re not an idiot, you know perfectly well that people can let you down and that the best of intentions can fail, and that some people really will never get better. Maybe they’re even right about Essek. Some of what he’s said about it all has made you uncomfortable too. But if someone is reaching out a hand for help, you don’t want to miss the chance to lift them out of darkness, no matter how deep in they were. You really believe love and trust and friendship are more powerful than punishment, and that the latter is easier than the former. You know that the first step to not doing evil things is not wanting to be evil to your friends. 

_Essek cares about us,_ you want to say, if they’d listen. _He likes us. We’re the first friends he’s ever had, and he’s_ trying _. He won’t let us down unless we let him down first, by not even trying to help him when he needs us._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my biggest pet peeve is people dismissing jester as foolish for being positive. she's a 20 WIS adult who is just determined to look at the world in a hopeful way and i think that's braver than any marine

**Author's Note:**

> this was a 2am thing that somehow became two 2am things and now may or may not be a series
> 
> disclaimer that i personally think all the nein are a bit right and a bit wrong in this situation because it's Complicated and these fics are not intended to be anything other than character introspection

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Circular Arguments](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24207481) by [GoLBPodfics (GodOfLaundryBaskets)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodOfLaundryBaskets/pseuds/GoLBPodfics)




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